


Strangers

by myracingthoughts



Series: Lover Come Back [5]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Arguing, Break Up, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myracingthoughts/pseuds/myracingthoughts
Summary: Most days they might as well have been two teenagers skulking off to neck while their parents were away, but he’d take those cheap, domestic thrills any day.A relationship in three parts: beginning, middle and end.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis
Series: Lover Come Back [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773718
Comments: 16
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

Love drunk. That was a thing, right? 

Being so intoxicated with a person, or even the idea of a person, that it just became all-consuming. If Clint Barton drank, really drank and not just the occasional beer, he might have likened his new relationship to a substantial buzz. 

The kind you chase on a night out only to end up much too sober or too done in to function.

Where she used to be on the periphery, Darcy Lewis quickly became the center of his universe, the common thread amongst all the things he started to enjoy in life again. Regular life, civilian life. He always looked forward to their joint time off; those days they could do everything together because even the simplest things were somehow more enjoyable with Darcy. 

He could have spent hours with her exploring Brooklyn, and often did. Flitting from tiny shops to freshly-opened cafes and bakeries anytime his feet were on the ground and not tied up in some QuinJet half-way around the world. 

“So you _really_ couldn’t think of a superhero name, huh?”

She swung their clasped hands a little further than usual, trying to get his attention away from whatever Clint had zoned out. His thoughts had drifted at the crunch and rustle of the paper bags from the local farmers market.

Clint’s brows skewed, “What?”

“Iowa’s the Hawkeye state. Did you give the bad guys your driver’s license too? Or only the ones that you had to file insurance claims against?” she asked with a wry smile.

To anyone else passing them on the street, their regularly scheduled back-and-forth banter might have looked like a tiff. Maybe even an argument if he managed to press Darcy’s buttons enough. But their good-hearted ribbing was what kept things interesting.

“I’ll have you know, my _New York_ State license still has Stark Tower listed as the address.”

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse than I expected. Certainly on brand.”

Is this what being a functional member of society was like? It wasn’t that he’d never done his own grocery shopping or errand running, but somehow these things didn’t feel as much like chores as they had in his time Before Darcy (or B.D. as he’d refer to it himself). If anything, the smile plastered permanently across his face in her presence was starting to become second nature.

But Darcy had always been beyond belief.

Not only did she greet every store clerk like she’d known them her whole life, but somehow she knew every bodega cat’s name like said life depended on it. Sarafina, the fluffy white Persian at the shop closest to his place was her favourite, but she made Clint swear that simple fact on his life, never to be said in any other cats’ presence. She had also ranked said bodegas on a ten-point scale, preferred snack availability being a key factor, and he tended to agree with her ratings.

Hell, even laundry was tolerable with Darcy. 

Especially when he could easily pick her up and toss her on top of the machines while he haphazardly piled t-shirts riddled with bullet holes into the wash and prayed for the best. The only load he paid attention to was his whites — Tony had threatened to stop ordering more t-shirts for him after his fourth time accidentally turning his Hawkeye-branded shirts pink (not that he stopped wearing them).

The spin cycle went by a hell of a lot faster with Darcy perched on a machine and his hands on either side of her hips, fingers laced through belt loops. She’d leave half-moon marks on his biceps, he’d half-heartedly try not to leave hickeys too dark, and they’d call it even.

“Not exactly how I pictured you between my legs,” she would joke (every time), but she never turned down the opportunity for a little extra attention whenever they could sneak it in.

They might as well have been two teenagers skulking off to neck while their parents were away, but he’d take these cheap, domestic thrills any day. After all, as the owner of the building, he had it on good authority that no one did laundry at 2 AM besides post-mission Clint. And blood was way easier to get out when it was still wet anyway. 

Even if it was his own more times than he’d like to admit. 

Thankfully Darcy didn’t get too nosy with dirty clothes, so the only evidence of him having been gone for days on end were the strips of KT tape and white bandages littering his body post-mission…which she thoroughly inspected with gentle hands and soft yet mischievous open-mouthed kisses.

The rumbling of the machines and her giggles at his fingers gingerly trailing up her bare thigh made for moments he didn’t want to end. A quick flash of teeth and Darcy wove her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. And all the thoughts melted out of Clint Barton’s head at that moment in that sugary sweet mix of satsuma and detergent-scented bliss.

He would have been the happiest man on earth if that was his laundry day experience for the rest of his life, but Darcy’s impact didn’t stop there. 

As a fervent night owl, Clint Barton had to admit that even mornings were better with Darcy. In fact, they quickly became his favourite escape. Sure, they had a good thing going with their coffee and bagel trade-off, but there was _nothing_ like waking up with Darcy Lewis on the other side of his bed. All tangled hair and specks of mascara on her cheeks and bruised lips from the night before. 

He’d pull her closer with one arm, flush against his chest as she gave a quiet, sleepy whine, quickly quieted with trailing lips on exposed skin. He’d forget about the sleep he didn’t get that night, too busy tossing and turning. He’d have a break from the pit in his stomach, thinking about an upcoming mission as he escorted Darcy to the office, even on his days off. 

And sometimes — Clint wanted to underscore the occasionally due to legal and HR reasons that he’d never admit to — they’d get in a little earlier than intended and create their own small escape in Stark Tower. Like this morning, coffees and breakfast in hand, waltzing into _Avengers_ Tower like it was any other day.

“Is it hot in here? It feels hot in here,” Darcy breathed like she hadn’t used the same line twice last week.

The flush spread across her cheeks and the twinkle in her eyes gave her away to anyone above a level 2 clearance in the building, but this little game they played depended on timing, so she did his due diligence with the next line.

“Maybe we should get you upstairs.”

Her hand found its way into his back pocket in the elevator, drifting up and underneath the back of his jacket and t-shirt. Clint tried to keep himself focussed on the mission at hand, finding it harder than usual. Navigation. Right.

Where were they going again?

Not the cooler in the lab, though; they’d learned not to use that room the hard way (involving a lock, a frantic phone call to Jane and some mild frostbite). Not his office either; being on the same floor as Tony’s lab didn’t exactly inspire confidence that they wouldn’t be interrupted by one of his tangents, breakthroughs, or explosions (“Twice in a week? How does he even manage that?”).

Thankfully FRIDAY picked up his slack, bringing them to a familiar floor where they raced into a nearby office and slammed the door behind them.

Thank god for Darcy’s office… _again_ , though the cream carpet was way too familiar to both of them at this point. His carpet burns had carpet burns. 

Leaned up against the back of the door, she’d give a flirty smile before his lips latched to hers.

Door closed, privacy protocols enacted, hands leaning against the door on either side of her head.

It almost came out as a growl, “How much time do you have?”

“Ten minutes.”

Clint Barton was nothing if not efficient.

“Perfect.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Ten minutes’ notice. That’s all you’re giving me?”

Look, being an Avenger wasn’t exactly for everyone, even Clint sometimes. 

Only sometimes.

There were days (more than he’d like to admit) he wondered what life would be like outside the walls of Avengers Tower. What landlord Clint would be doing right now, had he been any other person on any other day. 

So sure, he might sit on the couch with Kate to bitch and moan about the latest run-in with the tracksuit mafia, but put a mission in his hands, with a purpose behind him, and nothing would stop Clint from getting it done. He never turned down a chance to prove to himself —to the world, maybe— that he could help other people as Hawkeye.

Because if there was any truth or shred of a moral code inside him, he knew he could never give it up. He wasn’t sure if it was a heroic(ly stupid) sense of duty — he wasn’t Cap, that was for sure — or just his way of paying penance for all the idiotic situations he’d managed to get into throughout his life. But either way, Clint Barton wasn’t one to sit on his hands, no matter how wrapped up he’d managed to get in this little pocket universe he’d created with Darcy. 

Today just happened to be one of _those_ days.

“You’re killing me. It’s her birthday, man,” Clint pleaded into his hearing aids, hoping Sam would give him a little extra time to smooth things over. 

After all, it was his role to keep her safe, keep her happy, keep her wanting more, and he was determined to do that without dragging her into the mess that was his work life. His job —the one outside being Hawkeye— was to protect that softness, that light inside her that was his beacon home. And he took that job more seriously than either of them anticipated. 

So he wound up tucking those moments from those days away, deep down, along with the guilt of even thinking about a life outside of his own. He buried them in a ditch he’d dug decades before in the pit of his stomach, so he could spew it to some SI-mandated therapist on Tony Stark’s dime later. 

Needless to say, he had a long, running list.

But most days, it was easy enough for Darcy to get his mind off things— even if she didn’t know she was doing it. A well-placed kiss, a tug on his hand, her fingers carding through the scruff on the back of his neck. He lived for those moments, those little escapes. It was so intoxicatingly easy to get wrapped up under cozy blankets and tangled limbs and turn off the spy part of his brain for a little while. 

With her, things were different. He tried so hard to keep things simple, secure, and enjoyable. There wasn’t room for shop talk in their little bubble, this safe space he’d carved out with her. 

And really, what was there to be angsty about when he got to come back to her, to _that_ , at the end of every mission? 

“Sorry, Barton. No can do,” Sam sighed into the other end of the line. “Stark’s already pissy we have to cross borders to get you.”

But that was assuming she’d _be there_ at the end of every mission.

Sure, it might have sounded like the end of a honeymoon period, and yes, Nat had tried to warn him he couldn’t put all his eggs in the Darcy basket, but he was head-over-heels for the escapism of it all. After all, the first goodbye was supposed to be the hardest — it was supposed to get easier after that. Or, that’s what Clint had always been told. But he and probably everyone else in the world knew that was complete bullshit. 

Leaving for work didn’t get easier. 

Not this time, at least. Because he already knew all the smooth talk in the world wasn’t going to get him out of the consequences of this one. No, this was one of those moments he was torn from domestic bliss and had to pretend he didn’t see the hurt in her eyes at the thought of having to leave.

Which is maybe why the hotel hallway he was currently in was starting to look so inviting.

“Fuck,” Clint groaned. “OK. You have my coordinates, so I’ll see you then.”

So here he was, at 11 AM on Darcy Lewis’s birthday, standing on the doorstep of their hotel suite, struggling to find the words to tell her that he had to leave for an impromptu mission. He’d planned the whole long weekend for them; food, museums, strolls down cobblestoned Old Montreal and… gone, in a single phone call.

Another day, another guilt trip. 

Cell phone slid into pocket, hand against the door, he was stuck being the bearer of bad news again. Clint took a deep breath as he pushed against the wood, calling out tentatively, “Darce?”

He found her in the bedroom, already dressed and fuming, tossing clothes back into her suitcase at an alarming speed. She didn’t turn to meet his voice, she didn’t acknowledge him at all, and he might as well have been speaking to an empty room. 

“I’m really sorry, darlin’.” 

Scratching the back of his neck nervously, he sighed and leaned against the wall.

Air thick, silence deafening, he should have taken it as a sign not to push. And he might have stopped there, cut his losses and walked out the way he came to deal with it all later, but he felt like he needed to offer her something—some shred of hope.

“I uh, I’ve got to go. I might be back by end of day tomorrow, if you want to keep the reserva—”

“I already called the airline. I’m going home.”

He knew that tone—the strained fry at the end of a too-short sentence that gave away a tight throat, near-tears. There was no arguing with her like this, her mind was long made up. 

Clint reached out, settling his hand gently on her hip before she jerked her body out of his grasp. But as much as he wished he could comfort her, there was nothing he could say. Flinching, he stepped back to give her space as she whirled around wide-eyed like she regretted what she’d done. She held her lower lip between her teeth, swollen and raw, and her voice was softer now.

“Listen,” she started. “I know it’s not your fault. I know this is your job, but it’s my birthday, and I don’t really want to spend it alone in another country.”

He sighed, “I know—”

“Do you? Because I sure don’t,” she shot back with eyes narrowed like the beginning of his excuse had burned her. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, but when you get home, we need to talk about this.”

 _We need to talk_. The four small words that made Clint want to throw up for their historical context alone. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he did. 

“Clint, you might as well be on another planet anytime we’re together,” Darcy said, and he could see the tears already pooling in her lash-line.

Because the truth was, even when he was back, he wasn’t _home_. His thoughts kept drifting, processing and tucking things away so he could wake up to them or just not sleep. But that wasn’t something he would ever think to bother Darcy with. 

After all, it was his job, and he could push through anything, right?

“Darcy,” he soothed, at a loss for what to do with his hands as he waited for the words to drop. The ones she hid behind bitten lips and sad looks, the details she’d hidden away waiting for the right time. The way she looked at him differently, even now.

She was this piece of home that he didn’t want to corrupt with ugly talks about suspects, feelings, or motives. But he was sure Darcy wouldn’t miss those gruesome truths, or the other dozen or so things on the list of what kept him up at night.

He owed her space, he owed her the chance to chew him out, and most of all, he owed her the right to punch him in the face right now for doing this to her. 

If only it would actually help either of them feel any better.

“Yesterday, during dinner, you couldn’t stop checking your phone. You watch the news so on edge you’d think some secret love child of yours is going to be announced,” she rattled off like she’d been thinking long and hard about it. “You haven’t had a holiday off in almost six months.” 

He opened his mouth to interrupt, but she beat him to the punch.

“And don’t even try to tell me that it’s just your job, Clint. I know for a fact you have unused vacation _and_ you’ve been volunteering for shifts. So what are you running from?”

And with that, Clint Barton was well and caught. 

You don’t always get what you want in life, they said, but Clint _did_. 

He got his big-boy missions and world-saving moments and even some press coverage — it _was_ nice not being asked which superhero he was for once. He had a girlfriend who never once held his title against him, didn’t give him hell when he got home at 2 AM in head-to-toe bruises and didn’t ask why every single one of his good suits had bullet holes in them. 

But work and home. Darcy and SHIELD. Brooding Hawkeye and the Clint Barton she deserved. They were all opposites, like oil and water. 

And he had been wondering how long it’d take for her to figure that out. 

“Darcy, I just…” he couldn’t seem to find the words. “I’m in a rough spot.”

Sitting on the foot of the bed, she looked up at him with the weight of his world behind those stormy eyes. He wanted nothing more than to sit beside her, wrap her up in his arms and pretend that everything was going to be all right. That this wouldn’t happen again.

But it would have been a lie, and he didn’t lie to Darcy.

“I know that. The whole world knows that, Clint. But when are you actually going to do something about it? Maybe talk about it? Talk to me?”

“I…” He floundered, mouth opening and shutting as he struggled to find words to explain what he was saving her from. Why he didn’t want to alter the man she pictured when she said she loved him. 

He could have tried to put together some sort of explanation, but he couldn’t seem to say aloud why it was so much easier to be on a mission than be at home with her. 

So he did what he always did. He took the mission.

“I have to go. Sam’s going to kill me if I’m late for pick-up.”

He gave her one last glance before he turned to leave, hoping she’d cross the room and kiss him goodbye. But the invitation never came, and he was sure he’d worn out his welcome.

“Clint.”

He turned around to meet her call, wondering if she’d second-guessed her snub. But instead, the ‘ _thwack_ ’ hitting his chest had him staring at the little navy booklet now on the floor.

“Don’t forget your passport.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this chapter was one of the most finicky writes I've had in a while.  
> One more chapter to go before we're back in the post-Snap timeline!
> 
> Aiming for the next update to go up Wednesday or Thursday.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint knew he’d fucked up in Montreal. 

The harsh truth hung over his head the whole mission, wondering how he could even try to make things right when he got back. Pacing the length of the QuinJet (to Tony’s growing annoyance), he’d run the scenario through a dozen times but always came up empty. 

Where would he even start? How could he even begin to repair trust when he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the three simplest words?

It wasn’t like he didn’t mean them.

But it didn’t help that Sam was like a dog with a bone the whole op, checking in and asking about feelings, like he was the resident shrink. As if Clint hadn’t already been struggling with putting his feelings to words, the last thing he needed was an impromptu therapy session.

Suddenly Clint felt like the whole thing had tainted even his work life, and if work couldn’t even be a safe space for him, what did he have left? He was starting to think that maybe he should just give it all up, hoping for a love life, that sense of normalcy. 

Maybe he was just cursed.

But everything kept going back to Darcy because if anyone had a right to complain about the hand he’d been dealt, it was her. 

Would she still be there when they landed, or would her stuff already be long gone? The one-day mission quickly turned into two, and now he was even more worried about what he’d find (or not) when he unlocked the door.

So, of course, as soon as they’d landed back at Avengers Tower, Clint was already looking for an escape route. Something to get his mind off it. Out of this loop of intrusive thoughts, he’d found himself in. 

It started innocently enough. He’d ended up at the bar, not wanting to trouble her. Not wanting to bring the mood down. Maybe he’d called it a cooldown, to get his head straight before he tried to go back to his apartment. 

See, Clint tried to apply his usual logic to problems: Find a solve, make it work. 

Worked before? Even better. Then it was tried and true, which is precisely how Nat ended up on his post-mission speed dial. 

“You’d think she already moved out based on your reaction, Barton,” she shot over her beer bottle’s lip. “You need to get yourself together. Especially if she’s your soulmate or whatever.”

One perfect match for every person? Cute idea, but total bullshit. 

“I did not say _soulmate_ ,” he scoffed.

Real-life was rough around the edges. It was hard, it had holes, and things slipped through those little cracks for years if you weren’t careful. Soulmates was a cop-out as far as Clint Barton was considered. 

Relationships were work, and Clint wasn’t the lingering type. 

Not with missions, not with issues.

“Well, it’s as deep in the hole as I’ve ever seen you.”

If something didn’t work, it wasn’t worth pursuing. In abstract, of course. Tried and true. Path of least resistance. Whatever got him from point A to point B. These were all the things swirling around in that head of his, convincing himself that the worst-case scenario, where Darcy had already walked out, may not be so bad. 

He couldn’t be disappointed if his expectations were low to begin with, right?

“I love her,” he said it like it had just occurred to him. Like he hadn’t been thinking about it for months already. Like he hadn’t avoided saying it out-loud beyond insinuation with a well-timed “you too.”

“So, what’s the issue?”

He wished he knew. 

But his hour at the bar turned into three, and he was no closer to an answer. It wasn’t that he was drunk and too ashamed to meet her gaze or anything —he’d only had two beers—but he couldn’t get himself to take those few hard steps back to the apartment.

He felt like he had cement blocks on the ends of his feet.

Eventually, Natasha gave him the tough love he needed, peeling him off the stool and pushing him in the direction of home. He wasn’t sure he should be taking relationship advice from the Russian, but she was all the voice of reason he had beyond Darcy these days. And he didn’t have a lot of reason to spare if that wasn’t supremely obvious.

He thought a lot on his walk back. He worked up the nerve and thought up the words. 

But all that ardent preparation fell out of his mind at the look on her face. Even with the best intentions to talk to her about it, he came home and saw her there, and everything melted away again. 

_Darcy_ apologized for chewing him out and told her how much she missed him. She collapsed into his arms, a flurry of soft kisses and whispers, assurances and promises and all his thoughts drifted away.

He apologized too, but no reason or explanation seemed worth adding. Not when he’d ended up much better off than he thought he would.

Snuggling up beside her on the couch that’d seen too many days and just tried to forget. He could hear the worry in her tone, watch those stormy eyes search him for any hint of an injury. Searched him with soft hands and those longing kisses they used to share before he left for a mission. 

All’s well that ends well, right?

He kept trying to convince himself as much, hiding behind metaphors and idioms, flowery phrases that confused the root cause, the implications and the worries. But the hard truth was, none of them helped him feel less restless. They didn’t help him feel more useful, and they didn’t help him sleep any better at night. 

They never talked about it, but Montreal sat under the skin of their relationship, just waiting for the right moment that never seemed to come. And as much as they tried to keep finding time to escape to themselves, work kept getting in the way. Or at least, that’s how Clint wanted to frame it. 

And to his credit, the missions _didn’t_ get any better. 

They did, however, provide ample ammunition to widen the gap between himself and everyone he cared about. Wearing them down like a pipe leak that weaselled itself under floorboards, warping everything beyond recognition before the tenants even realized there was something wrong. 

The damage was done, slow and steady, and the worst part was he barely saw it coming. 

That first one after he got back was supposed to be a week. Get in, recon, get out. But the week turned into two, then three, and ended up a month-long goose chase that didn’t get anyone anywhere. That was Thanksgiving. Christmas was an explosion just outside Lisbon. 

It was the third time she found him slinking back into his Brooklyn apartment just after New Year’s Day when she finally gave him a piece of her mind, all the dominos falling into place. He’d made it in before sunset for once, so he thought he was in the clear, the smell of his favourite marinara drifting down the hall. 

But he knew the jig was up as soon as he saw her, as soon as he unlocked the door. It was like he’d walked into a solid wall of tension. Purple spatula in hand, she stared at him like she was half expecting him to run out the way he came.

He probably should have. 

Maybe if he’d been thinking clearer, the empty wine glass beside the stove would have tipped him off, along with the purple tint on her lips and her knitted brows.

“How’s _Natasha_?” the venom dripped out like it’d been building for months.

Because it had, and he’d been caught. Again.

“I just needed to decompress,” he explained like it would somehow make it better.

Darcy’s face broke, expression flickering as she tried to get a handle on her usual poker face. And he couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t take the way she looked at him differently, that flash of pity and hurt. Something inside of him didn’t ever want to say anything to make her look that way again.

“Clint, if you can’t trust me with you, then that says more about you than me,” she said, sounding more like his therapist than he liked. “It’s been a year Clint. A year of this. Of us, living in some fucking fantasy land.”

“It wasn’t a fantasy,” his voice wobbled at the thought that this hadn’t been real for her. “That was us, together.”

And what could he tell her? Nat could handle him at his worst; he had always been her mess to clean up and turn back into a functioning human being. He would never put that on Darcy. She didn’t deserve that responsibility—no, burden.

Somewhere inside him, he’d known this was coming. He’d built up the reasoning like callouses, hoping that wall he built, the one that separated her from the rest of his life would stop him from breaking down there and then. 

But for once in his life, the time that mattered, he’d miscalculated.

“You don’t trust me. You can call it whatever you want, put whatever chivalrous spin you want, but you’re not saving me anything. So who are you really sparing here?”

 _Him_ , he was sparing himself.

Gravel in his tone, he replied, “I do trust you, Darce.”

He was trying to keep her at arms’ length away from this messy world he built for himself. Scrubbing the bloodied knuckles and the stripping off the stained uniforms before she could see him. He was watering himself down, cleaning himself up, but in the process, he was hiding pieces of himself — so many that he wasn’t even a whole person anymore.

Clint loved Darcy for her fight but didn’t want her to see his. 

“You want to know everything about everyone else, want to build them up in your head. But what are you offering Clint? How much do I know about you? _Really_ know? How much do you trust _me_ with?” 

But still, even with all those issues sitting beneath the surface, this didn’t feel right. 

His head kept circling back to her being there. She wasn’t supposed to be here today; she was supposed to be on a work trip with Jane. Sweden or something. His brain was so rattled by her venom straight out the gate that he couldn’t quite remember. 

The acid in the pit of his stomach bubbled up, and he felt even worse.

“I trusted you with my life, Clint Barton. Why can’t you just let me in?”

It was then that she choked a sob, shaking hands covering her mouth as she tried to find her breath. In all their fights, he’d never seen her like this. His brain whirled around, looking for an explanation, landing instead on a throwaway comment she’d made as he’d left.

“Darcy… Aren’t you supposed to be on a trip?”

White knuckles gripped the countertop as she leaned her full weight into her palm.

“I um,” it was like he broke whatever angry spell she’d placed over herself. “My… my dad’s not doing too well. I got the call this morning, and I was going to ask you…”

His mouth went dry, suddenly seeing how he’d made this whole situation so much worse, how he should have seen this a mile away if he’d just looked harder. It _felt_ wrong, the whole scene, beyond the thick tense air and the feeling of his heart wanting to beat out of his chest.

This was so far beyond his own fuck ups, but somehow, he’d made it all worse.

Again.

“But I think it’s better if I don’t. I um, I’m going to go home —to my parents’. And I’ll pick up the rest of my things when I get back,” she turned off the stove, setting the purple spatula on the resting plate. “Maybe Jane will.”

He spotted her luggage by the door, blown right past them in his haste home. His throat went tight at the thought of everything, every piece of her, being packed and ready to roll out his life. Not a hint or a whisper of what they’d been building together for the last year.

Night and day. Beginning and end.

“I-I... Darcy. Darcy, I’m so sorry,” The words fellow hollow as they left his mouth, but he said them anyway.

“I know.”

He wanted her to yell at him, call him an idiot, scream until she was hoarse, and it suddenly sunk in, because that’s what he deserved. She deserved so much better. And he would have taken any seething remark, any criticism, any insult over what was happening in front of him.

He’d have said anything if he thought it would convince her to stay.

“Darcy,” he was grasping at straws here. “I love you.”

Sure, he’d said the words before and meant them, but never unprompted. Never without her starting the call and response they’d built up. She knew that, too, realized the significance; the shock on her face twisted slightly, the tears already on her waterline, hiding among her lashes.

He took a step towards her, but Darcy backed away, arms across her chest in defence. And he knew that if she walked away from those words, that declaration, that her mind was already made up.

Lower lip trembling, tears streaking her face, she was just out of reach as she made her way towards the door and grabbed her things.

“Goodbye, Clint.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure I'd have this up today. I've been having a rough week health-wise, but here it is!
> 
> One last part to go. Aiming for it to be up this weekend.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading! All comments and kudos are loved and cherished.  
> You can also find me on [tumblr](https://pasmonblog.tumblr.com/), where I post comic book content, work updates, and behind-the-scenes commentary.


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